Al Pacino slays as Phil Spector

I don't care what the movie is like, this still from David Mamet's Phil Spector biopic has been entertaining the shit out of me since it was published on the Vanity Fair website yesterday.

Judging from the expression on Pacino's face, not to mention the trailer, I'm inclined to think the film is as much about the 72 year-old actor's wilful march into onscreen dementia as it is anything else; an inside joke of Andy Kaufman-sized proportions that began with Cruising in 1980, and has only gotten louder and weirder ever since, with notable fist-in-your-face reminders along the way including Scarface, Scent of a Woman, and—natch—Pacino's barking mad turn as Ricky Roma in the 1992 adaptation of Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross.

There's no other explanation, really.

The movie, scheduled to air March 24 on HBO, is otherwise about the events leading to Spector's second degree murder conviction in 2009, although the famously nasty record producer probably should have been sent to jail seven years earlier for his work with Brit-pop weenies Starsailor.

Actually, I would have recommended 25 to life for his behaviour towards Eartha Kitt in this toe-curling appearance on the Merv Griffin Show in 1965.